Has anybody rented a prepaid cell phone for their vacation in France? Any reccomendations? Or can you use your US cell?

Angie, don't you have a cell phone with an Italian SIM that you can just change to a French SIM?

Or maybe this is for a visitor???

I have never rented a cell phone.

I have bought cell phones on Ebay and then bought SIM in the country I visited.

I have also gotten my US quad band unlocked by ATT and can put a different SIM in it.

Prior to either of those schemes, I just had ATT (Cingular, back then) set me up for international roaming (in case of emergency) but the rate/minute is really high.

A US phone will work in Europe if it
1) is a GSM with the European frequencies (this essentially means a quad band ATT or T-Mobile phone
2) is set up for international roaming by the US carrier, and
3) you don't mind paying a lot.

OR

1) Your ATT or T-Mobile quad band is unlocked (request the Subsidy Unlock Code from the celluar company), and
2) you buy a SIM card in France and install it in your phone.

Third option is to buy a quad band GSM phone on ebay and the SIM in France. I bought refurbished phones for my group of 4 couples for our trip in 2006.

Bill

We have unlocked quad band phones that we buy French sims for when we arrive. Another alternative is to just buy a cheap phone in France and buy a sim for it. I wouldn't rent--the prices tend to be outrageous.